Burial
by static-disturbed
Summary: A small, unseen moment after Merle's death. Daryl/Glenn friendship, family fic.


**AN:** Just a quick little unseen moment after Merle's death. Glenn and Daryl friendship.

* * *

When he exited the truck, jumped down off the step bar and shut the door, Glenn kept a hand on the gun at hip. The plot of dry land was littered with bodies. A handful of walkers wandered aimlessly, he put two down with the quiet ease of his knife as they approached him with curiosity. About twenty feet away he found Daryl, sitting cross legged in the dirt, forehead resting on his clasped hands and the bloody knife held between them.

Merle had been dead for hours probably, his face concaved with bloody knife wounds. The body lay a few feet from where Daryl sat and it was painfully obvious what has transpired, that his friend had been forced to put his own brother down.

"Told Michonne not to tell anyone where I went," he growled, his voice sounding more broken than menacing.

"Hours passed," Glenn reminded, "had to come looking for you man. She told me, told me Merle let her go."

After a long moment, Daryl climbed to his feet, brushed the dirt from his pants and sheathed his knife. His eyes remained fixed on his brother's corpse.

"We should head back," Glenn suggested, "the others are worried. We need to start figuring out what our next move is."

Daryl nodded, letting the other man's rationale sink in but then hesitated.

"Can't just leave em here like this," he croaked, digging in his pocket to produce a half-used matchbook. He looked down at the remains of what had once been his brother with a tight jaw and plucked one free. "Any gas cans in the truck?"

"No," Glenn reached out, snuffing out the flame of the match with his palm before it could be lit. He looked into the other man's blue eyes, into the pain etched in those hardened orbs, "we bury _our_ dead."

Under the worn leather of what had once been Merle's vest Daryl's shoulders shifted in relief, he swallowed something invisible at the back of his throat and released a shaky breath. He didn't have to say thank you, the gratitude radiating off him was palpable.

"Come on," Glenn nodded over his shoulders towards the silver pickup truck, "I'll help you load him up."

They worked in silence, draping Merle's remains with a paint tarp that still lay in the back of the truck. With a quiet count to five they heaved the body into the bed of the pickup, Daryl grasping the tailgate with white knuckles and a choked sob when he slammed it shut.

They passed the first of many signs warning 'Hitchhikers May Be Prisoners'.

"Not in the cemetery," Daryl grunted from the passenger side as they turned onto the familiar dirt roads that would lead them back to the prison, "he shouldn't be there, not with Lori. Not with T."

"We'll find somewhere else close," Glenn offered, "outside the fences."

"Ya ain't gotta help," Daryl told him, staring into his lap and picking at the stubs of his bitten down fingernails, "not after what he did, I know he didn't do right by you or Maggie. Hell, didn't do right by me most of the time."

"It's what we do," the other man simply shrugged, "what family does."

Daryl turned to regard him, Glenn's words from a few days previous replaying in his mind.

" _My family, my blood is standing right here in front of me."_

"Ya know, lettin' Michonne go, tryin' to help us with the Governor, Merle never did anything like that in his whole life, put someone else first," Daryl explained, opening up in a way he rarely did, "So it ain't right but part of me is relieved, relieved I ain't ever got to worry about where he is anymore, worry bout' him poppin' in and out of my life, trying to drag me down. Cause I wasn't ever smart enough to stop walkin' in his footsteps."

"I guess brothers are like that," Glenn surmised, "My parents had all girls besides me, I never had any."

"Nah," Daryl grunted, reached over and gave the younger man an affectionate shove in the shoulder, "you got a couple."

"Family," Glenn quipped with a grin, "ya don't get to pick em'."

They pulled the truck into a small cove of trees by the side of the road half a mile out from the prison, a quiet little nook where sun hit the ground in sporadic rays thru the leaves. Glenn left Daryl kneeling by his brother's side to turn the truck back towards the prison to retrieve two shovels.

When he returned, Daryl was pacing, chain smoking and seemingly growing more and more anxious to put the body in the ground and have the whole thing be done with. Glenn wore a small, apologetic smile because he wasn't alone. Rick and Carl sat in the bed of the truck, hopping down into the dirt with shovels under their arms. Maggie spilled from the cab first, helping her father ease his way onto the step bar with his good leg and then down beside her.

The men began to dig with little said between them and Daryl felt Maggie's doe eyes baring into him. When he finally glanced up to meet her gaze she pulled him into a tight hug.

"You're allowed to mourn," she whispered against his hair, steady and confident in her words as always, "don't change a thing between us."

He nodded, swiped at the tears on his cheeks and went to work, helping the brothers the new world gave him dig a grave for the brother blood had burdened him with.

They buried Merle in the Georgia woods, the place the Dixon brothers had always retreated to when the world hit them hard. Hershel led a prayer over the grave, one for Merle and one for the peace of his brother, a dear member of their family. One by one they made their way back to the truck as the groan of walkers in the woods began to grow closer.

Daryl looked down at the mound of fresh dirt, felt Glenn's presence at his side.

"For what it's worth," the man at his side began, one hand clasping Daryl's shoulder, "the good Merle did today, that was him following your footsteps for once."

Daryl nodded and the two turned back to the truck. Glenn hopped into the driver's seat and Daryl climbed the tailgate into the bed, took his rightful spot beside Rick and Carl and offered them both a handshake. They drove off as walkers began to creep thru the tree line, dragging their feet over the newly laid plot of Merle Dixon. Glenn drove with his hand out the open window, turned his family toward home.


End file.
